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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Heli (2013)

Heli (2013)

Director: Amat Escalante Country: MexicoRuntime: 105 min

Heli (Armando Espitia), the protagonist of Amat Escalante's 2013 Palme
d'Or nominee of the same name, is a young Mexican who lives with his
father, his son, his young wife (Linda Gonzalez) and 12-year-old sister,
Estella (Andrea Vergara). He's prone to bad luck, keen on his naps and,
when a census taker comes to the house, hesitates about how many people
live there with him. However, when 17-year-old army cadet Beto (Juan
Eduardo Palacios) falls in love with Estella and makes plans for the two
of them to run away together, Heli's cataclysmic knee-jerk reaction
will plunge the family into pitiless and brutal violence.

Narrative films concerned with roving drug gangs, political corruption
and barbaric acts of extreme and horrendous violence are depressingly
common nowadays and have formed the backdrop for several high profile
Hollywood movies in recent years, including Oliver Stone's Savages
(2012) and Mexico's own Miss Bala (2011). However, Escalante's Heli -
the director of Sangre, Los Bastardos and a close friend of fellow
countryman Carlos Reygadas (Silent Light, Post Tenebras Lux) - provides
us with an uncompromisingly dark look at his nation's plight, showing
clearly how some families live in impossible situations with no hope of
escape, short of keeping their heads down and fingers crossed.

The details are telling: the American advisor who implements the most
disgusting and degrading humiliations on his cadet students; the doctors
who refuse abortions to rape victims; the politicians who will burn
drugs as a photo opportunity but will do nothing to address the real
problem. The brutality on display in Heli is at times almost impossible
to watch, as it should be. A horrific torture scene takes place - made
worse by the fact that it is interrupting a computer game - and there's a
disapproving mother who occasionally peeks from the kitchen to see what
the young lads are up to. There's also a subplot about Heli and his
wife's sex life, as they attempt some normality in the midst of the
madness.

Escalante avoids numerous well-worn social realist clichés and creates
(at times) genuine beauty, evoking the place with a an eye for
atmosphere. Yet ultimately, it's the pain and madness of the foreground -
a country in a state of pitiless war with itself and in which there is
very little place for ordinary life - which will dominate. By simply
avoiding complete despair Heli hints at hope, but remains an intense and
disturbing experience nonetheless.